<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Sweet, Silky, Soft, and Shiny by Girl_in_Red_Crossing</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22930948">Sweet, Silky, Soft, and Shiny</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Girl_in_Red_Crossing/pseuds/Girl_in_Red_Crossing'>Girl_in_Red_Crossing</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Appropriate Use of a Handkerchief, Caring Jaskier, First Kiss, Fluff, Inappropriate Use Of Candy, Jewelry as Weapon, M/M, Overwhelmed Geralt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:07:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,251</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22930948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Girl_in_Red_Crossing/pseuds/Girl_in_Red_Crossing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a couple of bros, sucking on sweet things... sharing silky things... lying in soft beds together... (kissing)...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>966</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Sweet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Geralt returned to camp, Jaskier was stoking the fire, crouched down and focused on his work. Geralt tossed the kikimora head in his general direction just to watch him startle and yelp, but the bard quickly recovered. He stood and stretched his arms wide with a grin.</p><p>“The triumphant hero returns!” he declared. “How was the glorious battle?”</p><p>Geralt grunted as he sluiced blood and other fluids off his armor with one hand.</p><p>“Eloquent as always,” Jaskier replied. Then he made a gagging sound that Geralt suspected was mostly exaggerated and pointed to the brook they had decided to camp beside. “Stream,” he commanded. “Now. You reek of death. Probably due to all the…” He waved a hand toward Geralt. “Death.”</p><p>Geralt just grunted again and headed for the water, but he turned when Jaskier said his name. The bard retrieved something from a small pouch in his pocket and tossed it to Geralt, who caught it on instinct. When he opened his fist, a small pebble lay on his palm, yellow and slightly sticky. He looked up at Jaskier for explanation.</p><p>“The potions,” Jaskier said. “I’m sure they do wonders for your witchering, but they do your breath no favors.”</p><p>When Geralt just continued to look at him, a small crease furrowed Jaskier’s brow. “It’s a lemon sweet. I picked some up last time I was in Novigrad.” He tilted his head, making a tendril of brown hair catch on his eyelashes. “Geralt, tell me you’ve had sweets before.”</p><p>Geralt shrugged and popped the sweet in his mouth. When he bit down, it cracked against his teeth, flooding his tongue with a sharp taste both sour and sweet.</p><p>Jaskier rolled his eyes. “Gods, you are a savage. Next time at least savor it <i>a little</i>. I spent good coin on these.”</p><p>Geralt had no response to that–if it was food, what was there to do but eat it?–so he turned to continue to the stream. By the time he finished washing off the worst of the muck, the fire at camp was burning merrily. Jaskier sat cross-legged in its light, lute in his arms, teasing out notes and chords without vocal accompaniment for once. Geralt thought he might get an evening of relative peace, but as he laid out his armor to dry, his ears picked up a noise he didn’t recognize.</p><p>He glanced at Jaskier and caught a flash of something yellow between his lips. As the man plucked at his lute strings, he rolled a sweet around in his mouth. It clacked against his teeth, appeared as a slight bulge in one cheek and then the other, forced Jaskier’s lips into a pucker. His cheeks hollowed, and he made a sucking sound that was practically obscene to Geralt’s sensitive hearing.</p><p>Without his conscious direction, Geralt’s tongue slipped out, chasing the last of the sugar from his own lips. At that same instant, Jaskier looked up. Blue eyes flicked to Geralt’s mouth, and the bard smiled.</p><p>“Good, right?” he asked around his mouthful. “I’ll teach you to appreciate the finer things yet.”</p><p>Geralt only hummed and went back to his armor, ignoring the stray thought that he knew exactly what Jaskier’s mouth tasted like at that moment.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Silky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As they neared the campsite, Geralt jerked his arm out of Jaskier’s grasp, but the bard just sighed and grabbed his bicep more firmly.</p><p>“I can still see,” Geralt hissed.</p><p>“Yes, the way you ran into that tree back there was very convincing,” Jaskier replied in an unimpressed drawl.</p><p>Geralt grit his teeth but focused on the blur of the forest floor, painted hazy red with the blood he couldn’t mange to blink out of his right eye. The left was slashed and swollen shut. When Jaskier steered him to sit on a stump in the clearing where they’d left Roach, Geralt raised a hand to try and scrub the blood away, but Jaskier batted his fist aside.</p><p>“I told you to stop doing that.”</p><p>Before Geralt could growl back at him, the bard stepped away, his footsteps crunching through dead leaves to Roach and then followed by the clink of bottles. The soft pop of a waterskin’s cork preceded Jaskier’s return to fill the space in front of Geralt; the barest touch of calloused fingertips prompted him to lift his chin. A trickle, warmer than the air but cooler than the blood, eased down the side of his face, and he suppressed a shiver.</p><p>The water stopped, he blinked again, and one eye at least was clear. Clear enough to see when Jaskier set down the waterskin and reached into his sleeve to withdraw a silk handkerchief. As it neared Geralt’s face, he caught the bard’s wrist in a tight grip.</p><p>“Don’t use that,” he snapped.</p><p>Jaskier rolled his eyes. “We’ve been over this. Charm isn’t contagious. You won’t catch my dashing wit and ruin the brooding you’ve perfected.”</p><p>Geralt glanced at the delicate fabric dangling from Jaskier’s fingers. It was edged in lace. “You’ll spoil it,” he muttered.</p><p>When Geralt looked up again, he could see the soft lines that crinkled the corners of Jaskier’s eyes when he smiled.</p><p>“I’ll compose a stirring ballad in honor of its sacrifice,” the bard promised.</p><p>After a long moment where neither of them spoke, Geralt released Jaskier’s hand and closed his eye. Jaskier dabbed the silk at his brow gently, a whisper of a touch, soft and cool.</p><p>“Some things around here could do with some spoiling,” he murmured. As one of his hands continued to blot the blood away, the other stroked along Geralt’s hairline, teasing free the strands that had stuck in the mess. “Some people around here could too.” </p><p>“Hmmm.”</p><p>Despite himself, Geralt felt tension seep from his body under Jaskier’s ministrations. The other eye would require a stinging, pungent healing salve, and then he’d have to collect the dead barghest’s head, hunt some dinner, feed Roach, clean his weapons and armor, and endure Jaskier pestering him for details all night.</p><p>But for this one moment, he allowed himself a deep breath and savored the soothing touch and the sweet scent that lingered on the silk.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Soft</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Feeling regret after agreeing to accompany Jaskier to some noble’s event was a given, but Geralt rarely felt it as keenly as he did now. The ballroom was stuffed with every minor lord and lady in the kingdom, and the press of it, the <i>stench</i> of it, overwhelmed him. Even keeping to the outskirts, he’d been jostled and bumped, and he’d lost count of how many guests had recoiled when they realized just whom they’d been knocked into.</p><p>Worse was the din. He could barely hear Jaskier’s singing over the assemblage who chattered and brayed like livestock in a barnyard. Most noble houses had at least one corner where the noise was lessened by the sweep of tapestries or the bulk of a column, an alcove hidden away for secret dealings and gossiping and trysts. But this room was noting but an ugly, austere box, as if the lord who’d dreamed of its grandeur hadn’t saved any coin to fill it. Every laugh, every call, every shout and simper echoed back until Geralt felt sure the weight of sound would crush him.</p><p>A small balcony overlooking the garden offered the only reprieve, and even that was mostly occupied by lovers quoting bad poetry at each other. A few couples scurried back to the ballroom when he took a place in the balcony’s corner, gripping the iron railing, but too many stayed. The light breeze felt cool against his skin, but it carried faint rustlings and a whiff of sex from the bushes below. He squeezed the metal beneath his fingers until his knuckles went white.</p><p>“Geralt! There you are!” Jaskier’s cheer assailed Geralt, and he shut his eyes. “How are you supposed to protect me from a horrible death from out here?”</p><p>“Perhaps I’ve decided you deserve it,” Geralt growled.</p><p>“Rude.” Strong fingers latched onto his shoulder. “Come. Let’s get some wine and food. You’re always less cranky after you’ve eaten.”</p><p>“Don’t coddle me!” Geralt snapped with a glare, and he knocked Jaskier’s hand from his arm.</p><p>Instead of backing away, the bard tilted his head in that questioning way of his, his gaze intense, his lips turned down. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>Geralt sneered and turned his eyes back to the dark garden. “Go back to the party, Jaskier.”</p><p>“I will once you tell me what’s wrong.”</p><p>Geralt rounded on him and crowded him up again the railing as Jaskier held his hands up in surrender. “What’s wrong is that you won’t stop yammering when there’s already too much fucking noise!”</p><p>A pair of gasps sounded behind them, and Jaskier’s gaze flicked over Geralt’s shoulder. The bard’s blue eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened; he snapped a tight “Ladies,” before retaking hold of Geralt’s shoulder and steering him toward a staircase that led from the balcony to the garden. They left a duo of shocked dowagers in their wake. Geralt assumed Jaskier was angry at his outburst, at Geralt ruining his courtly reputation, but when Jaskier muttered, “Sour old biddies,” under his breath, he reconsidered.</p><p>Instead of pulling Geralt into the garden, Jaskier led him to a door on the lower level. They re-entered the house in a dimly lit corridor, and the sounds of pots clanging and shouting assaulted them. Geralt stumbled a step, but Jaskier kept firm hold of him and tugged him deeper into the narrow warren of the servants’ passages. On edge as he was, Geralt lost the thread of their direction, and a needle of instinctual panic jabbed him, but Jaskier’s step never wavered. Out in the wild, among natural and unnatural beasts, Geralt never lost his way, but the back corridors of power were Jaskier’s natural hunting ground.</p><p>They came to a flight of stairs, and when they emerged at the top, they stepped out onto lush carpets, a far cry from the bare stone of the passages below. Jaskier strode confidently down the hall, Geralt in tow, and opened one of myriad polished-wood doors. The chamber within was small but well-furnished, and Geralt recognized Jaskier’s pack as it spilled its contents into the corner.</p><p>Jaskier left Geralt to extinguish all but one candle and then sat on the bed, thick and deep with tall posts and wide curtains that could be shut around it to keep out the chill.</p><p>“Take off your boots,” he instructed as he bent to do the same. </p><p>Geralt could only stare at him. The noise of the ball reached even here, quieter but almost more maddening; his ears drank up every sound, searching for a threat that wasn’t there, sending a crawling feeling down his neck and spine. When he didn’t reply, Jaskier glanced up. The space between his brows furrowed; he set his boots on the floor, then came and collected Geralt with a hand on his wrist.</p><p>Geralt let himself be led to the bed, let Jaskier push him down to lie on his side atop the flower-stitched coverlet, even with his boots still on. Jaskier climbed into the bed beside him and then reached up to draw the draperies closed. Once they were side by side within their damask den, a warm palm came to rest over the ear Geralt did not have pressed to the pillows. The sound of the blood in Jaskier’s veins drowned out any other noise. The fingers of Jaskier’s other hand tangled with Geralt’s and brought them to rest on the bard’s shoulder. </p><p>“Feel my doublet,” Jaskier murmured. His voice was muffled by his hand, but the vibration passed between them like a plucked lute string. “Feel the velvet, the way it’s soft under your fingertips.”</p><p>After a moment’s hesitation, Geralt let his fingers twitch. The material beneath them was warm from Jaskier’s skin. It gave slightly beneath his touch, the surface made of a thousand tiny threads, but still united as one piece, thick and rich.</p><p>“There’s a design stamped into the fabric,” Jaskier added. “Can you feel it?”</p><p>Geralt’s touch wandered a bit further, and he felt where a line of the threads had been pressed down like a trail in a forest. He followed it slowly, its curves and whirls, letting it lead him where it would. It skirted Jaskier’s spine, a mountain range beside the path, and he could feel the rise and fall of Jaskier’s steady breath. He hadn’t realized his own breath had been coming too fast until it slowed to match Jaskier’s.</p><p>His travels ended at the seam at Jaskier’s waist, where an edging of ribbon stood guard, a boundary even the Witcher was not brave enough to cross. Not yet. </p><p>They lay in silence and in darkness, breathing together, the thumb of the hand against Geralt’s ear barely stroking at his temple. His muscles loosened; his thoughts roamed, unencumbered by the threat of danger or of death. He could smell flowers, though winter was well on its way. He welcomed it in that moment, the hush that would fall across the earth when the snows fell and animals hid themselves away. Perhaps he would go to Kaer Morhen this year. Perhaps he would invite Jaskier to come.</p><p>When the breaths they had shared seemed to outnumber the stars, he finally forced himself to stir. </p><p>“You should return to the party,” Geralt noted, his voice rough like he had slept. He didn’t think he had, but he felt rested all the same.</p><p>“I will,” Jaskier replied. “In a moment.”</p><p>Neither of them made any move to leave.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Shiny</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jaskier doesn’t stop playing when Geralt enters the tavern, but his smile widens in a way that makes Geralt’s lips twitch helplessly upward in return. It has been five weeks (37 days) since their last meeting, and Geralt has been working steadily. He is tired, sore, caked with dust from the road, and so despite the mockingly sad moue Jaskier’s pulls from across the room, Geralt doesn’t sit to listen but heads straight to the stairs. He glances back before starting up, and Jaskier’s left hand lifts from his lute as he plays an open chord and flashes two fingers and a thumb pointed to the right. Geralt nods and continues up to the second room on the right. </p><p>It’s large and airy; Jaskier has clearly been earning decent coin as well. Jaskier’s pack spills open across one bed, notebooks and pouches of sundries (Geralt helps himself to a lemon sweet from one) and stained travel clothes. A filled bowl of stew sits on the table and a filled bath sits in the corner, both grown cold (he’s arrived later than he would have liked). He eats the stew anyway and warms the bath with Igni before sinking into the lavender-scented water. He soaks away his tension and lets his mind drift until he hears applause filter up from the tavern below. His shirt is still untucked when Jaskier bursts into the room, lute in one hand and heavy purse in the other. </p><p>“You missed a fantastic set,” he declares as he fusses with putting his lute away, even going so far as to kiss the neck. “The people here love you now. You’re welcome,” he adds pointedly over his shoulder.</p><p>Geralt only grunts in response as he goes to retrieve his swords and whetstone from his pack. He’s stopped by Jaskier flitting into his path. The bard puts one hand on his chest and the other clutches tight to a small velvet bag. His grin is wide, and he catches his lower lip in his teeth for a moment in his excitement.</p><p>“I got you something,” he says in a low voice, as if it were a secret between them. “Hold out your hand.”</p><p>Geralt sighs but does as he’s bid. His eyebrows lift when Jaskier turns his palm from the ceiling to the floor. He fumbles with the bag and withdraws something, but before Geralt can see what it is, a ring is slipped onto his finger.</p><p>“Ha!” Jaskier crows. “I knew it would fit.”</p><p>Geralt looks down. The band is silver, and atop it sits a sculpted, five-petaled flower made of the same. He scowls at Jaskier, confused rather than displeased, but the bard’s eyes are still alight. He takes Geralt’s hand in his, curling his fingers across his knuckles and tucking his thumb against the base of the ring. He presses slightly, a soft click sounds, and the petals of the silver flower twist then spring until the ring resembles a miniature crown with five sharp blades no larger than Geralt’s thumbnail.</p><p>“Isn’t it clever?” Jaskier enthuses. “A fellow in Oxenfurt makes them. Obviously meant for self-defense of softer folk than Witchers, but I thought, well, it’s silver, and if you jabbed it into a creature’s eye or gullet, it might at least buy you a few seconds of time. And that matters sometimes, doesn’t it?”</p><p>It does. Even in a lifetime of centuries, seconds can mark the moment when that lifetime ends. Geralt stares down at the ring, at his hand in Jaskier’s, at the bright metal that will be stained and crusted red if he uses it. Jaskier’s thumb presses again, and the knives revert to a flower, its threat concealed beneath its beauty, as with so many things in the world.</p><p>“It’s all right if you don’t want to wear it.” The words are soft but not sad, and when Geralt looks up, Jaskier is still smiling. “It’s a gift, not an obligation.”</p><p>“I do,” he replies, and then he has to clear a strange hoarseness from his throat.</p><p>Blue eyes widen slightly, then crinkle at their corners. “Well... good,” Jaskier says. His hand still holding Geralt’s tightens, but he holds up the other expectantly. “Then toss me a coin, Witcher.”</p><p>Geralt frowns, and Jaskier rolls his eyes. “It’s bad luck to gift a blade,” he explains as if that fact were somehow self-evident. “You have to pay me for it. A copper, a button, whatever you have.”</p><p>“I don’t have anything.”</p><p>“You must have something in your pack.” Jaskier tilts his head toward where Geralt has left his gear. “I won’t have bad luck trailing me across the continent just because you-”</p><p>Before he can think better of it, Geralt surges forward and captures Jaskier’s lips in a swift kiss. The bard jerks in surprise, but when Geralt wraps his free hand around his nape to pull him closer, he comes willingly. More than willingly. In moments, Jaskier has recovered from his shock and then some, tangling his fingers in Geralt’s hair, licking across the seam of his lips. Geralt opens to him and then groans at the feel of a clever tongue flicking across his teeth and palate.</p><p>When they pull apart, breathing heavily, foreheads pressed together, Geralt can feel Jaskier’s grin return even with his eyes closed tight against the warmth in his chest that threatens to ignite to flame.</p><p>“I don’t know if that fulfills the terms of the superstition,” Jaskier pants, “but I certainly wouldn’t call it bad luck.” He tightens his grip in Geralt’s hair, and the Witcher suppresses a shiver. “Though as I recall, that ring has five blades, not just one.”</p><p>With a growl, Geralt claims Jaskier’s mouth again, for one more kiss, four more, as many more as the bard will allow him, for now and for all the days to come.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, thanks for reading! (Also, I am a bit shy about replying to comments, but I treasure each and every one.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>